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Acting state geospatial officer outlines plan for statewide GIS coordination
Summary
Susan, the state's acting Geospatial Information Officer, told the committee the office will coordinate statewide geospatial datasets, reduce duplication and support emergency response and planning; she said some federal grants have funded start-up work but long-term funding is unresolved.
Susan, Georgia's acting State Geospatial Information Officer, told the State Planning & Community Affairs committee that the office will coordinate development and maintenance of location-enabled data across cities, counties, regional commissions and state agencies.
"Geospatial data is just data ... you just put the word spatial in front of it," Susan said, explaining that adding location to records (parcels, floodplains, building footprints) lets agencies analyze risks such as flooding and plan infrastructure. She said the office's role is to build standardized datasets once and make them reusable across many programs, saving time and money.
Susan emphasized that many local governments already collect this data and that the state role is to roll that work up into interoperable statewide datasets. She told the committee that without maintenance plans, datasets quickly become out of date and that statewide coordination could save the state "millions and millions" annually.
The testimony framed the bill before the committee as primarily creating an advisory council linked administratively to the Department of Community Affairs (DCA) to set priorities for a Geospatial Information Office; the committee pressed for additional detail about long-term funding and staffing before implementation.
